Just Because You Are Old Does Not Mean You Have to Listen to Old Music

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To Those Who Still Don’t Think Black Lives Matter

Jesse Williams’s acceptance speech for the BET Humanitarian of the Year Award offers a very strong, moving and (justifiably) angry rebuttal to anyone who dismisses, or even discounts, the unfortunate need for the Black Lives Matter movement.

Since this blog focuses on popular music, I am excerpting his words about entertainment culture and appropriation . . .

“We’re done watching and waiting while this invention called whiteness uses and abuses us, burying black people out of sight and out of mind while extracting our culture, our dollars, our entertainment like oil — black gold, ghettoizing and demeaning our creations, then stealing them, gentrifying our genius and then trying us on like costumes before discarding our bodies like rinds of strange fruit. The thing is — just because we’re magic doesn’t mean we’re not real.”